Video 6:15
Uncommon Soldier

Louisa RebgetzUpdated
Tue 20 Nov 2012, 4:37 PM AEDT

Author Chris Masters discusses his new book, based on the time he spent embedded with Australian forces in Afghanistan.

Transcript

LOUISA REBGETZ, PRESENTER: He's known for exposing police corruption that led to bringing down the Bjelke-Petersen Queensland Government in the late 1980s. But award winning journalist Chris Masters has spent the last few years focused on the war in Afghanistan. Chris Masters has done several trips to the war torn country and been embedded with Australian special forces. His new book Uncommon Soldier is about the people he met during that time - many of whom were from Darwin. I caught up with Chris Masters this week during his trip to Darwin.

LOUISA REBGETZ: Chris Masters welcome to the program.

CHRIS MASTERS, AUTHOR & JOURNALIST: Thank you.

LOUISA REBGETZ: You say it's easy to paint Australians as victims in the war in Afghanistan yet that is far from the truth and only half of the story in Afghanistan has been told. What do you mean by this?

CHRIS MASTERS, AUTHOR & JOURNALIST: It's easy to see that we're victims when time and time again the stories that appear in the national newspapers are another soldier killed in action, another soldier seriously wounded by an IED. They don't do body counts, they don't talk about the fight that's taken to the other side and I think that's right and it's an honourable position to take but they don't tell much about the victories either. You tend to think of the Afghanistan conflict as one that is just mowing the grass - that you know you go into these valleys and you attack the Taliban and then you withdraw and they come back. So we don't know enough about the very good work that special forces is doing. You know I've been there three times and I've seen a lot of work. I mean the story of somebody building a bridge that provides enormous benefit to the people who live in an area that was otherwise cut-off when the rivers run strong - that's not the kind of story that is going to make it into the media, yet it is quite a common story.

LOUISA REBGETZ: In the book we meet some characters that are the people fighting in this war. How would you describe these troops?

CHRIS MASTERS, AUTHOR & JOURNALIST: I was very impressed by some of these young soldiers, I remember talking to a special forces soldier that fought a vicious action where he saw his mate killed and his other mates were dropping all around him and he had to fight off the Taliban and at the same time attend to the wounded friends. He got out of the Army. He went and trained to be a paramedic because it was so much on his mind that he could have perhaps done more for his friend. He won a gallantry award. When I asked him to explain what he did he just couldn't do it. When I asked him to tell me what the citation for the gallantry award said he said I've never read it so you know, very humble impressive people. A female nurse that I met over there who worked again with special forces, people don't realise that women have been going into the battlefield as well. There's quite a lot of debate about it but the reality is, they've already been in the frontline and I was impressed by quite a few of them. This woman, on her own, saved many, many lives. These soldiers not only have a combat role but they have a humanitarian role as well.

LOUISA REBGETZ: You were in Afghanistan when two soldiers were killed by an improvised bomb attack I understand. What was it like being there on that day?

CHRIS MASTERS, AUTHOR & JOURNALIST: I say that it was a privilege - it was an unusual way to describe it I know but it was obviously a tragic day and as tragic as I've experienced in a lot of years in Journalism but the privilege came in the fact that I was within that inner circle at a time when they experienced immense grief and so I got a sense of it as well. I was able to share something that outsiders rarely share. I mean they fight for one another so when they lose somebody it's as if all of them die just a little bit.

LOUISA REBGETZ: When you consider the casualties that the war in Afghanistan has claimed, in your view do you think it's been worth it in the long run?

CHRIS MASTERS, AUTHOR & JOURNALIST: It probably won't be considered to be worth it but it's something we'll probably have to get used to because these conflicts aren't fought in the way that world wars were fought in the past where there's a clear result at the end. The result is not clear but I don't think we've been losing and I don't think for a second that we've been on the wrong side, I mean far from it. And I think that there have been many more gains than people realise and I think the victory that you experience when you work with special forces, when you see them coming back from operation day after day when they're knocking out Taliban drug laboratories, which fuel the insurgency. They take tons of drugs off the battlefield. You'd have to say that they're winning.

LOUISA REBGETZ: What does the future then hold do you believe for Afghanistan?

CHRIS MASTERS, AUTHOR & JOURNALIST: I have thought for a while that the objective was simply to get out ensuring that we did more good than harm. I think that the Taliban and the local population will reach an accommodation in the way they classically do in Afghanistan, so I think the gains that we set out to make are going to be modified. What is most scary is whether governance will hold because I've seen it as a hundred years job that we've had to do in about a decade and the biggest problem we've had over there has been the corruption of the Karzai Government. I don't think that's going to change to quickly so it's still scary but I just hate to think that the negative view that people have of the Afghanistan conflict might in any way cast a work over the shadow of the soldiers because they've been carrying the weight of the mission for the rest of us and in my view they've done a very, very good job.